While there was always some debate as to whether President Obama had genuinely kept his promise to ban lobbyists from his administration and the polickymaking process, now there is no doubt that the 2010 ethics package is void. After a lawsuit was brought by lobbyists, the Office of Management and Budget issued a new rule allowing registered lobbyists to serve in government.

According to the new rule, corporate lobbyists will now be able to serve on boards and commissions that advise decision-making throughout the executive branch. The lobbyists are, without a doubt, back inside the walls now. Though it is an open question as to whether they really ever left.

The change is the latest example of the limits of the president’s effort to rein in the influence ofspecial interests in government. Mr. Obama barred lobbyists from contributing to his campaign and signed an order on his first day in office in 2009 prohibiting them from serving in his administration.

But Mr. Obama has made a number of exceptions to that rule and has hired lobbyists for several important jobs. Critics argue that the president’s position has led to unintended consequences, prompting some operatives to refrain from registering as lobbyists merely to preserve the option of working with the administration while they are essentially doing the same thing as a lobbyist.

Serving on an advisory commission is a great way for lobbyists to network for clients and glorify themselves in hopes of extracting higher fees for the clients they already have. But it can go beyond just being a feather in their cap as the access lobbyists have to decision-makers in government will inevitably lead to influence peddling and corruption.

Maybe there is no way to really prevent corruption in a political system built on bribery private campaign contributions, but this reversal by Team Obama is a not-so-subtle admission that they are not even going to symbolically fight special interests running Washington anymore.

Damn, this pisses me off. Where the hell is my damn lobbyist, my briber, my influence peddler. Corporations are not only people too, they own Washington. Corrruption to the max – the corruption trickles down to the state and local levels as well. What a shitty country we have, and no hope in sight.

Not sure about that travel thingy but they do receive campaign money from lobbyist. I read sometime ago that’s were conservative like kock bros spent money first then on to elected officials. Then looking around at some of the last court dissension’s lately seems about right. Own the courts, media, and govt what not to like

The facts of Caperton v. Massey Coal are what happens next. Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia were A-OK with those facts, and only the moribund remnants of Kennedy’s ethical conscience — probably encouraged by an antifascist minority that was significantly more impressive then than it is now — prevented SCOTUS from endorsing de facto judge-buying. Given Kennedy’s subsequent votes in Citizens United and McCutcheon, I have to wonder if he wouldn’t go along with the rest of the fascist wing if Capterton were decided today…

Obama hired Wall Street bankers to head Treasury, hired the for-profit health insurance executive that Senator Max Baucus had hired to write the Affordable Care Act, to co-ordinate implementation of the Affordable Care Act, hired corporate representatives to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and hired a lifelong cable and telecoms lobbyist to head the Federal Communications Commission. And that’s just off the top of my head. In this broader context, rescinding the cosmetic, semantic ban on registered lobbyists serving on government advisory boards hardly seems worth mentioning.

Admittedly, Obama’s hiring a Monsanto lawyer and lobbyist to head the FDA’s Food Division was also at the top of my head, but the sentence was already pretty unwieldly…